There are some forms of experience that appear universal to all human beings. It might even be said built upon the same foundation, if you will. Over the past 500 years or so, since around the time of the Renaissance, one such experience has been frequently articulated as a type of mediating faculty between mind and world, known and unknown. Concepts such as imagination, collective unconscious, subtle substance and astral light, all attempt to describe the unique experience through which inner and outer worlds coalesce and interact. While many of the frameworks used to describe this experience differ in their perspectives, i.e. clinical, cosmological, magical, they all attempt to describe a similar field of experience. It can be argued Eastern traditions have approached this relationship more consistently by considering mind, energy, and world as a unified process however, bringing these perspectives together allows for a comparative understanding of how both esoteric and psychotherapeutic traditions grapple with the same underlaying question: how subjective experience relates to, shapes, and is shaped by reality.
If a six is turned upside down it becomes a nine. Evidently, nothing has changed in the structure of the six, yet what appears is different. The distinction is not in the object, but in orientation and position. What is encountered may be taken as primary or as reflection, depending on how it is approached, or from where one is looking. In this sense, what appears in image is not separate from what it reflects, but continuous with it, although displaced. This is important. The imaginal sits within this territory. A zone in-between conscious and unconscious awareness, where image carries meaning, speaking its own language for the ears of understanding. Here, image is not an illusion, nor is it a mere projection in any simple sense. Here image is a way in which something becomes perceptible although not encountered directly in any usual way.
This is where the problem begins. Because what is being worked with here is the same for all of us, however what it is taken to be diverges considerably depending on the framework of the one that receives it. This does not imply that all orientations are equal. The same capacity that allows for recognition also allows for distortion.
Jung and the instability of the imaginable.
“We must therefore look in the obscurest corners and summon up courage to shock the prejudices or our age if we want to broaden the basis or our understanding of nature.” Carl Jung 1973.
Any serious account of this territory must of course include, if not start with, Carl Jung. Not simply because of his influence on psychotherapy, but because of the particular problem his work opened and never fully resolved. The above quote emerges from the pages of Jungs seminal works on Synchronicity, which alongside the concept of Archetypes, remain amongst the most recognised (if not overused) of his contributions from both within and outside of, the field of psychotherapy. However, if we look at Jungs work in the manner in which he invites, might many of us still be a little surprised by what we find?
Writing in the early twentieth century, Jungs work notoriously departs from the reductive perspectives of the early psychoanalytic movement, proposing a stratified model of the psyche. Again this is important. Rather than treating mental life as confined to personal history and repressed material, he introduces the concept of the collective unconscious - a shared dimension of the psyche structured through archetypal forms common to all mankind. The psyche, in this formulation, is stratified, some of which are encountered, including material arising through the unconscious which is universal, or ‘collective’ in nature. This is often described as semi-autonomous and crucially, is encountered rather than produced.
Jung’s method of active imagination develops in response to this. Rather than interpreting images in order to reduce them to underlying causes, he proposes that they be engaged directly. The individual enters into relation with the image, allowing it to unfold. The image is not merely symbolic of something else. It acts, and is acted with. This radically destabilises any purely interpretive psychology.
Crucially, this instability becomes more pronounced when Jung’s work is situated within its broader intellectual context. His sustained engagement with alchemy, symbolism, and pre-modern systems of thought places him in proximity to traditions that had long been concerned with the same forms of experience. Perhaps most revealing is his reference to Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa in his works on synchronicity. This is not incidental. For those unaware of the significance of the name, Agrippa is widely considered a foundational figure in the development of Western Esotericism in the modern era. Agrippas publications or ‘three books on occult philosophy’ became the foundations of several key theurgic societies such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and Elus Coen (Martinists) for example. Importantly this signals an awareness that the problem he is addressing (how meaning emerges outside of linear causality) has been approached before, under different, but recognisable terms.
Synchronicity itself still challenges the dominant explanatory model. It proposes that events may be meaningfully related without being causally connected. Meaning, in this sense, is encountered in pattern. This places Jung in an uneasy position. His work becomes foundational for psychotherapy, yet it continues to exceed the framework that claims it. The imaginal is retained, but it resists full containment.
A Field Already in Motion.
The significance of this really becomes clearer when Jung is not treated as an isolated innovator, but as a participant in a wider field that was already in motion around his time. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw an intense convergence of interests around transatlantic spiritualism, psychical research, the discover of the unconscious mind, symbol, and transformation. Experimental psychology (including psychoanalysis) develops alongside spiritualism, occult revival movements, and philosophical attempts to map consciousness. The very origins of psychotherapy can be seen as emerging from within this very field. One might even say in some ways psychotherapy becomes an outgrowth of this field.
Within this, stratified accounts of the human being are consistently in circulation. The idea that the individual participates in levels of experience, that transformation involves movement across these levels, and that symbol and image play a central role in mediating this process is not unique to any single discipline. It is a shared problem, approached through different languages. To understand what figures such as Jung and others are doing, it is necessary to recognise that they are not creating this terrain from nothing. They are participating from within it.
Assagioli and the formal Structuring of the Psyche.
Roberto Assagioli develops his work within this same field, and confronts many of the same problems, though his response differs in orientation.
Trained as a psychiatrist, and like Jung initially associated with psychoanalysis, Assagioli moves toward what eventually becomes known as psychosynthesis. Like Jung, he rejects a purely reductive account of the psyche. He proposes instead a stratified model, distinguishing between the lower unconscious, the field of ordinary awareness, and what he terms the middle, and higher unconscious or superconscious. This replicates very closely the theosophical model of consciousness proposed by Helena Blavatsky - Assagioli’s involvement with Theosophy was no secret. At the centre of this system sits the Self, understood not simply as the ego, but as a point of integration across these levels. This parallels Jung in significant ways. Both articulate a layered psyche. Both posit a dimension that exceeds the personal. Both orient their work toward transformation rather than simple analysis. These are not independent developments. They emerge in the same historical moment, addressing the same structural problem.
However, Assagioli’s work moves further toward organisation and application than Jung. His emphasis on will (remember this word), synthesis, and the deliberate integration of opposites introduces a more explicitly practical orientation, or one might say operation. Where Jung allows symbolic ambiguity to remain active, Assagioli seeks to stabilise and structure the material.
This becomes particularly clear when placed in relation to earlier esoteric figures such as Eliphas Levi. Writing in the nineteenth century, Levi systematises a body of thought drawing on Hermetic and Kabbalistic traditions, presenting a vision of the human being structured through dynamic relations of opposition, balance, and transformation. In his work, these relations are expressed through symbol, image, and correspondence. They are not abstract principles, but operative forms.
Assagioli encounters this kind of material not as an outsider, but as someone working within a cultural environment in which it is already prevalent. What he does is not simply adopt it, but reorganise it. Symbolic structures are translated into psychological principles. The underlying relations are retained, but the symbolic language is reduced. What was once encountered through image becomes articulated as a therapeutic model.
While this translation makes the material more accessible and legitimate within a psychological framework, it also alters its character. The imaginal is not removed, but it is stabilised within a different context. What was once engaged becomes increasingly described within a professional field, and thus established therein.
Israel Regardie and the Persistence of Operation.
A different trajectory can be seen in the work of Isreal Regardie, whose position complicates any attempt to draw a clean boundary between psychotherapy and esoteric practice.
Emerging from within the early twentieth-century esoteric revival, particularly through his involvement with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Regardie is not approaching imaginal material from the outside. He is working within a tradition in which image, symbol, and visualisation are already treated as operative. His later engagement with psychotherapy does not replace this orientation, but sits alongside it. As a slight aside, for those unaware of the cultural significance of this Order, amongst its original members were the likes of; William Wyn Westcott, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, Dr Wiliam Robert Woodman, W.B. Yeats, Aleister Crowley, Arthur Machen, Florence Farr, and A.E Waite.
In Regardie’s work however, practices such as visualisation, relaxation, and the deliberate direction of attention are not framed as interpretive tools. They are methods for producing change. Image is constructed, entered, stabilised, and used. This aligns closely with formulations such as that of Aleister Crowley, through which magick was defined as the art of causing change to occur in conformity with will (that word again!). Later psychological language reframes this as change in consciousness, but the underlying operation remains recognisable. The resemblance is striking.
Regardie’s significance however lies in the fact that he does not resolve this into a single framework. He neither abandons esoteric practice in favour of psychological explanation, nor reduces psychological insight to esoteric language. Instead, he continues to operate across both, exposing the instability of the boundary itself. What appears in one context as technique remains, in another, operation. The imaginal does not change. It is the orientation toward it that shifts. That these processes are shared however does not mean they are used in the same way, nor that they lead to what is actually true.
Operating across boundaries and the gateless gate.
A further complication arises when the distinction between domains is examined not at the level of belief or framework, but at the level of operation. Here, differences that appear stable begin to dissolve even further - least not for the practice of transpersonal psychotherapy.
Within the history of Western esoteric thought, the relationship between magic and religion has long been contested. Magic is often defined as the manipulation of forces toward specific ends, while religion is framed as worship, supplication, or alignment with a higher order. Yet such distinctions are not consistent across time or culture, and closer examination reveals that they may be less substantive than they first appear. Similar to psychotherapy.
As has been observed, practices that are later categorised as “magic” were, in earlier contexts, understood simply as part of religious life — not as a separate domain, but as its operative aspect. The use of symbol, image, ritual, and directed intention functioned as means through which individuals engaged with and sought to effect change within their world. The distinction between legitimate and illegitimate uses of such practices emerges later, shaped by cultural, theological, and more importantly institutional pressures, rather than by any inherent difference in the practices themselves.
Once this framing is recognised, the boundaries begin to shift. What appears as two distinct domains can be understood as different orientations toward the same set of operations. The question is no longer whether a practice belongs to one category or another, but how it is being named, justified, and situated.
This has direct implications for the relationship between psychotherapy and Western esotericism. Practices that, within psychotherapy, are framed as techniques — guided affective imagery, symbolic engagement, the deliberate direction of attention — correspond closely to operations long present within esoteric traditions. The structure of the activity remains consistent: attention is directed, image is engaged, and change is sought. The process is the same and evidently preexisting.
This does not collapse the two into a single undifferentiated category. The frameworks within which these practices are understood remain distinct, and these distinctions matter. However, at the level of operation, the separation becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. What differs is not what is done, but how it is understood and legitimised.
In this sense, what psychotherapy has adopted and systematised may be understood not as an entirely new development, but as a reframing of processes already present within earlier traditions. The language has shifted and the context has changed. The operations however remain the same.
Shared Structure, Different Orientation
Across Jung, Assagioli, Regardie, and the traditions that precede them, show certain structures recur: stratified models of the psyche, interaction between conscious and unconscious processes, the use of symbol and image, and the possibility of transformation through engagement, to name just a few.
These are not isolated developments. They indicate a shared field in which similar problems are being, and were being worked on. The same domain is encountered, but stabilised differently. What appears as psyche in one context may appear as symbol, force, or correspondence in another. The disagreement is often taken to be about the nature of the thing itself, when it may actually be that the real concern is how it is being approached, and by whom it is sanctioned. Nothing in the structure itself has changed. Only how it is seen.
Legitimacy, Translation, and Narrowing.
As psychotherapy establishes itself as a discipline, it defines the conditions under which experiences can be recognised and worked with. Of course, this brings the necessary structure, standards, accountability, and legitimacy required for ethical and safe practice. However, it also shapes what is permitted to count as real and meaningful within its own terms.
In this process, the imaginal is not excluded, but reframed. Symbol becomes concept. Image becomes representation. Operation becomes technique. What cannot be easily stabilised within these terms is often reinterpreted or marginalised. At worse, it is ignored and even pathologised. This is not arbitrary, but it is not neutral. It reflects the conditions under which the discipline operates. What is lost is not the experience itself, but its range of interpretation. The same processes continue to occur, but they are increasingly understood within a narrower frame.
What Remains.
What becomes difficult to maintain is the idea that these capacities originate within any single system. The ability to encounter and engage with the imaginal, to work with image, and to be transformed through it, is not produced by psychotherapy, nor by esoteric traditions. Both develop methods for working with it. Neither owns it. This is something humans can simply do. This is not for sale.
What appears in imagination is often treated as secondary, as if it were derivative of something more real. Yet it may be more accurate to understand it as the form through which what is otherwise inaccessible becomes perceptible. Not separate, but reflective. Not inferior, but differently positioned. The imaginal is not owned. It is encountered. The six and the nine remain the same form. What changes is how they are seen.
Three figures times two systems reveals that which can be discovered as six. Perhaps if one were to reflect on this closely it might even be encountered intimately through 9. This is the work of the image-ician or, magician. What remains is 11, it always was.
